Democracy should not mean rupture, argues Nyusi – AIM report

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Democracy should not mean rupture, argues Nyusi – AIM report

7:38 CAT | 22 May 2017

DW (File photo) / President Filipe Nyusi

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Thursday recommended that Dutch NGOs linked to questions of peace and democracy should invest more in education in Mozambique, so that the democratic exercise is not understood as a moment for provoking ruptures in social and political life.

Speaking in the Hague on Thursday, at the end of a round table with academics and NGOs, held as part of his official visit to Holland, Nyusi said that, although the country has held elections regularly, there has been no culture of recognising the results.

(In all five general presidential and parliamentary elections, the ruling Frelimo Party has won and, despite international observer groups giving the elections a generally clean bill of health, the major opposition party, the rebel movement Renamo, has claimed repeatedly that all the elections were fraudulent).

“The exercise of democracy cannot mean dividing society”, said Nyusi. “Almost all the electoral cycles have ended in various lamentations, and there is no culture of recognising the results, and praising one’s opponents. This brings setbacks”. He thought it strange that this should happen when the international community was observing the elections, and giving its opinion on the results.

Turning to the concept of “civil society”, Nyusi noted that “sometimes civil society is confused with opposition to the government. We want to give space to civil society to express itself with transparency, but without undertaking actions which discourage the advances already made”.

Nyusi recognised Holland’s role in promoting transparency and good governance, adding “we can design good policies, but if there are no good practices of governance and transparency we cannot attain the objectives of harmonious development that we desire”.

The President asked for greater coordination between NGOs to avoid overlapping of projects in the same zones, because “this increases asymmetries and complicates life still further, because the public thinks some areas are privileged at the expense of others”.

Nyusi said the Dutch government has prioritised cooperation in vital areas and he would like to see NGOs complement these efforts in areas such as rural development and food security.

He spoke of the constraints the Mozambican economy has faced recently, due to such factors as the international financial crisis, the fall in commodity prices, including for key Mozambican exports, and the suspension of direct aid to the Mozambican state budget. (All 14 donors who contributed direct budget support, suspended disbursements, after the revelations in April 2016 that the previous Mozambican government, under President Armando Guebuza, had guaranteed hidden debts to the value of over 1.1 billion US dollars).

“We are doing all in out power to bring annual inflation down from 25 to 15 per cent, and to increase the GDP annual growth rate from 3.6 to 5.5 per cent this year”, said Nyusi. “Together with international monetary organisations, we are taking measures to correct the errors committed and to restore the confidence of our international partners”.